


The Stolen Child

by Delphi



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Childhood, Drama, Fairies, Literary Allusions, M/M, Mental Illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-09
Updated: 2006-11-09
Packaged: 2017-10-04 11:51:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delphi/pseuds/Delphi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Albus Dumbledore is not quite human.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Stolen Child

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2006 run of the ADXSS Buggering Bee. Challenge: _Albus Dumbledore is not quite human..._

**1.**

On the 20th of March, 1847, three-year-old Albus Dumbledore disappeared from his Winchester home.

It was nearly an hour before anyone marked his absence, his father in Portsmouth for the day and a colicky infant brother holding his mother's attention captive. Only the faintest breeze from the open nursery window raised the alarm.

Drusilla shivered, dandling Aberforth in her arms and coming to the slow realisation that there was too much silence behind his fussing. The family house-elf was dispatched, and a search ensued: in soft annoyance at first and then in growing panic as each corner and cupboard failed to reveal the boy. Drusilla ran out into the garden then, looking in plain sight, and then into the street beyond, shouting her son's name at the top of her voice until the neighbours began to gather.

Curious and concerned, they sent out a party of men. The adjacent gardens were searched first, then the back alley, under fences and inside outhouses and barrels, any place that a small child might wedge himself. It spiralled out from there to the thoroughfare, fists rapping on front doors and shop windows—out farther to the net of streets and alleys between, farther, fruitless, farther than even a sturdy boy could toddle. They searched the riverbanks, following the water down to the mill.

An owl was sent out to the boy's father, who rushed home by Floo to join the search. The day wore on, and the sky clouded over, the early warmth of spring retreating. At dusk, the party reconvened and set out again with dogs and torches, this time out the city gate to the south downs. The dark hills and the yawning grey sky loomed hopelessly before them.

They returned to the city at midnight, empty-handed, and Drusilla wept when the rain came.

The next morning, the party set out again, fewer in number and blunter in urgency. They split themselves between the city and the downs, the dogs restlessly padding ahead of them. Those outside the gates were the ones to raise the call, the men scarcely believing their eyes when they caught sight of a small figure atop the hill at the edge of the woods.

They approached, the boy silent and naked and wide-eyed. The wet, smooth ground squelched and slid beneath their feet as they climbed up the hill to coax him down. He had not spent the night out in the weather; his skin was dry and his feet clean, though there were fresh leaves caught in his hair.

He was cold to the touch, but he warmed when Silas Jackson wrapped him up in his jacket and bore him away from the damp fog curling around the woods to his home hearth and waiting family. The boy uttered nothing that might hint at where he had been, and all involved were too relieved to press as he was fed and bathed and wept over.

For a time, the incident was forgotten.

**2.**

"Come away, come away, Severus—it's a beautiful day!"

Severus Snape glances up from his book, blinking at the sudden afternoon sunlight cutting in through the window and illuminating the motes of dust drifting slowly across the library. Madam Pince hisses a 'shh!', and Severus privately seconds it. The first Easter holiday of his teaching career is newly upon him with delicious quiet, no sounds save the skylarks outside exalting in the novel stillness. The castle is empty of students, the air of last October's victory revived, only a skeleton staff remaining.

The headmaster smiles like an unrepentant schoolboy and slivers his voice to a loud whisper. "You'll catch your death of studiousness. Will you join me for a picnic?"

A basket pops out of thin air onto the table. Severus, not being seven years old, discreetly rolls his eyes. "No, thank you, Headmaster."

It isn't that easy, of course. From his lips to Dumbledore's ears, no never really means no.

The headmaster leans in closer, laying a hand on his volume of Heller's _Hexes Hepatarii_. His beard carries the scent of new leaves, the musty library suddenly stirring at the edges with a warm spring breeze. Severus can feel the presence radiating from him; holding Albus Dumbledore's sole attention is sometimes as thrilling and dangerous as flying towards the sun on wax wings.

"Indulge me?"

Severus is, as always, unable to resist. He makes a show of reluctance for pride's sake, carefully noting his page number with a sigh. "If that's an order."

The headmaster demurs: he would do no such thing, of course. An arm is offered, but Severus takes the basket instead, and off they go, Dumbledore in the lead and Severus following in helpless orbit.

**3.**

Sometimes the Hogsmeade forest spoke: at night, behind the rustling of leaves and parliament of owls—by day, at certain times of year when the stars and seasons were right. A high, sweet chorus so distant it might be mistaken for the wind through the trees. The soft tread of a procession of hoofs like raindrops on the forest floor.

Sometimes, from the very edge of the outlying trees, there were whispers, softly calling out to the known and the unwary in voices older than the wych elms.

**4.**

Spring fever. There is something in the air as they make their way across the grounds. The bees dart quickly and hungrily at their feet, the perfume of early blooms thick around them. It is difficult at times not to feel like a schoolboy when he's alone with the headmaster, tongue-tied and resentful and aching for the man's favour to last just a little longer.

Dumbledore is at his most charming today, seemingly invigorated by the turn of the season, all smiles and small asides about the weather, the exams to come, the state of Sprout's mallowsweet patch. Severus nods and hums when he should, squinting in the sunlight and stealing little glances sidelong at the flash of silver thread on the old man's sleeves, the motion of his hands as he speaks.

They stop on the lee side of a hill, hidden from the castle and fenced in by the southern wall and the shadowy border of the Forbidden Forest. Severus pauses a moment before sitting, discomfited. The forest has always held a certain dread for him, full of strange sounds and strange beasts. The Whomping Willow, swaying with disarming sleepiness, haunts the corner of his eye.

"Muffin?" the headmaster offers, the basket unpacking itself, flatware marching out along with jars of honey and cream. Blackberry jam, his favourite.

For all that the dinner table at Hogwarts has never left anyone wanting for richness, there is a certain odd decadence to dining outdoors. The headmaster has a heavy hand with the spreading knife. The breeze stirs him, and he's hard-pressed to keep his stomach from fluttering as he's regarded with a sly sort of fondness.

If it were any other man, he would know what he's here for. He came up under Professor Slughorn, after all, venturing into the upper echelons of society amongst the bored and perverse. This is a dangerous solitude. For all that they're out under the open sky, there is something not-quite-allowed about their meeting. Then again, it has always been his nature to court guilt at the hint of anything that brings him pleasure.

The headmaster smiles slightly, suddenly, as if reading his mind, and Severus sweeps a quick eye along the edge of his thoughts in search of chinks in the wall.

"Now, would I do that?"

There's a teasing there, sharper than the gentle cajoling he's accustomed to with Dumbledore. Amusement, yes, and teeth. He raises an eyebrow. "Yes?"

Dumbledore throws his head back and laughs. "Oh, Severus—don't you dare change."

He colours, looking away, but an arm comes around him, keeping him from leaving out of pique. He stills, his skin prickling with gooseflesh. Any other man...

"I don't believe I've ever seen a lovelier April," the headmaster murmurs, a hint of theatre in his voice as he reaches out and pushes a lock of Severus's hair from his eyes.

Severus can almost glimpse the script, deliberately laid out at the very edge of that cluttered study of a mind for him to cheat from; he can taste the anticipation in the air.

"Would it be terribly forward of me," Dumbledore continues, "to suggest it could be even lovelier?"

There it is. The hand on his side, the amused and unexpected—but not _uncharacteristic_—hunger behind glinting spectacles. He feigns shock, if only to gain a moment in which to measure, to calculate the distance between them and the angle to which this could work to his advantage.

The headmaster's smile takes on a rueful curve, feigned perhaps, but feigned for his benefit, which is nearly the same as sincere. "My pride isn't so sterling that it cannot stand a few new dents, Severus. You know you needn't fear."

And he does. Or rather, he knows exactly what he needn't fear and what he needs to. The hand at his side begins to withdraw, and he halts it. The headmaster's skin is cold to the touch at first, curiously so, but quick to warm against his own. He closes his eyes and lets himself be kissed.

**5.**

In the bitter winter of 1960, Eileen Prince lost her newborn son to a changeling.

Her father would not believe her, nor her aunt, nor her grandmother. They called her overwrought, for she had just lost her husband—even if he was only a Muggle—and had a new babe and no prospects. They offered to take it, the thing that the fair folk had left her in place of her child, but even if she could not stand to touch it, neither did she dare let it out of her sight, for she knew it was only through an even trade that she might get her true son back again.

It hid its nature from others, but she knew. It was a twisted, sallow little thing with an ugly, wizened face. It screamed all the time in a high, piercing wail. It gave her no rest, and it hurt her near to bleeding every time she grudgingly nursed it.

She tried her best to be rid of it. She left it out in the back garden alone and shut herself up in the house, listening to it screech until the neighbours came knocking. She brewed tea in an eggshell and made a storm in a teacup in an attempt to trick it into speaking, and she pricked it with an iron pin, but that terrible wailing was all the changeling would utter.

One night, in desperation, she bundled it up and took it out to the stream that ran through the woods. She knelt down beside the water and put the changeling on the surface, which was rimed with the thinnest ice. Then, slowly, she pushed it under.

It struggled, as the old tales said it would. It clamped shut its mouth and opened its eyes, but it would not reveal its true form as her pounding heart frantically counted the seconds. The trees were silent.

Eileen burst into tears then, and she pulled the changeling out from the water, whereupon it gave a wretched gasp and, after a pitiful mewl, found its lungs for a fearsome cry. She unwrapped the sopping blankets and folded the freezing creature up in her cloak.

Sobbing and defeated, she took him home and named him.

**6.**

He isn't a virgin. If he had left school as one, which had seemed more likely than not at times, his later circle would have seen casually to it for their own amusement. He has been with boys—two, to be exact—and with a woman, once, out of obstinacy when someone once claimed it was obvious he was bent.

It has become apparent, however, that these trysts were _vastly_ unrepresentative.

He trembles, despite his best efforts, like a leaf in the wind. His robes are open, his body bared to the sunshine and a touch that is at first cool, then warm, then almost unbearably hot. He cannot move, his hands gently pinned down every time he tries. Shh, shh. He is kissed, the breath pulled from him, muffling the faint sounds that try to escape.

He spreads his legs, his hands clenching in the grass as Dumbledore presses down atop him. Wet lips and the brush of a beard tease down his neck. There is magic at work here, he can feel it: wordless, wandless, dark even, like the green shadows of the forest. The faintest suspicion niggles at him. A story. He can feel himself sinking, swallowed up by the earth.

Dumbledore is humming. It should annoy him, but he cannot gather the concentration to bother. Soft—a lively song, sweet and unfamiliar, and somehow old, though he isn't quite able to say why it strikes him so once his hips catch the rhythm of it.

"I—" I know, he means to say, because for a sudden, single moment he does, and it is a terrible and wondrous revelation. His words leave him, though, cut off by a rough cry of pleasure, and he swallows the secret down to the pit of his stomach.

**7.**

"I won't do it," he said.

"Of course you will."

He had no choice.

"There is always a choice, Severus. That is why this world is so full of weeping—and joy. You have always brought me joy."

He heard they buried a body on Hogwarts grounds, but just what it was, he could not say.

**8.**

It is late afternoon by the time they return to the castle. A bite has come into the air, already descending to a late-day chill, but the headmaster is warm and flushed, freshly fed on love or passion or youth—whatever it is Severus has given him.

Severus, in turn, basks in the light of his attention just a little longer, dragging his feet.

They linger in the archway, and a kiss is pressed to the tip of his nose. "The loveliest April yet," Dumbledore softly proclaims.

He can still catch the scent of damp grass and new leaves and something subtle beneath it, intoxicating.

"After you, my dear boy." The headmaster waves opens the heavy door with a graceful turn of his hand.

Severus pauses, and he swears he catches a glint of something—anticipation, or laughter, or satisfaction—in the old man's eyes as he reaches out slowly and curls his hand around the cold iron handle.

"No, after you."

**9.**

On June 1st, 1998, Severus Snape returned to Hogwarts grounds. The wards parted for him, laying down a path to the edge of the forest. The castle turned a blind eye, buzzing with celebrants, but a glance from the window might have found a cloaked figure pausing, head cocked sharply as if straining to hear some far-distant voice. Then he walked into the forest, the shadows swallowing him up.

He was never seen again.


End file.
